Possibly changing PVP penalties

[William Antrim]

I was having a think today about the lack of good quality fights in NC.

PVP atm sucks. This is a fact.

From zoneline hugging to bringing a PPU to fights in Pepper Park everyone here knows it is pretty dire. I do not need to preach this part. People are too afraid of dying currently and this needs to change. You cannot stop the losers bringing ppus to a pp1 fight but thats just shit players - no arguments there.

One of those reasons why is probably the ball ache of having to die and the 20 minutes it takes to sort your char out and go back to a fight.

If death became more easily gotten over I think that more people would not be as bothered about dying and thus if more people died fights would become more fun. At least for the winner. It would potentially lead to more open world fighting too like op fights for people also.

A long time ago people complained about fights - they whined that they were too long and the beaten clan kept coming back so GR rules got changed and now we have this terrible rule where clans can lock down half the map. These days people complain there are not enough op fights - one reason for this is the difficulty clans have to get around the map in order to fight a decent fight. Half an hour of travel for 2 minutes of fighting is not a good ratio. The game needs more accessibility and more fluidity of fights in my opinion. Ops should be easier to take and be changing hands every 30 minutes, not every 3 months. More fights means more fun.

The GR rules should be set back to those of old. One hacker at the most and possibly do away with the hacknet part.

Death is the biggest bugbear however. Part of the half hour travelling is the ten minutes of SI people have and the added problem of finding a poker. That ten minutes could be better spent having another fight. Fighting = fun. Standing around waiting = not fun.

I would like to see SI either HALVED or REMOVED dependent on the fee paid and the option to select this at the death screen. If rich players want to get back to a fight and have more fun then they should be allowed to PAY to have the SI removed, not wait in line. The fee would have to be substantial however. For example I propose that to REMOVE SI completely the runner pays DOUBLE the normal death fee.

This would drain money from the economy in a good way as death is constant in NC. It would give poor or newer players the option to continue with the SI rules as they are - ie just pay the amount according to your level for the full 20% duration. However experienced players (LE'd or not) should have the option to take the death as chill out time as many do now OR be able to buy their way out of it and get back to the fight.

Today many veterans talk about nc and their fond times and almost all of them have one common theme - I do not have the time I used to have to play this game - time is a commodity that is free to us all in abundance but that we always wish we had more of.

In short then:

Change GR rules back to the old way - lets get the ninja hacking/op fighting going on again and have those ops changing hands properly.

Give the OPTION to pay for SI removal rather than waiting it out.

I did consider the possibility of changing SI rules per zone but I couldnt find a way to make this fair so I think hitting the pocket is the best compromise.

Please discuss?

[Cursed Shadow]

Removing my post because it detracts from yours.

I think it's a good idea.

[Bruder Malmsdoo]

I like the money-sink. But it must be embedded logically in the storyline and gameworld.

[Cornhusker]

Love the idea. Hell, if we already are forced to pay as we die why have SI? The lack of population currently would definitely push this in the better direction. If the population grows so much to the days of old, then by all means change it back to current ways.

[eNTi]

this can't possibly be abused...

[Manuel Moonez]

William, i agree with you in regard to the opfight scene a bit on the sad side.

Let me speak about what you propose.
The GR rules are fine i think. It´s supposed to be that way! If you can just haul in reinforcements all the time you loose the advantage for the defenders to starve the attackers out. I also question the fact that it takes 30 minutes to get around the map-that´s what vehicles are for. Buying your way out of SI has an important downside which you should acknowledge since you already mentioned people having less time to play. If you create a two class system where the rich guys can just buy the SI off, you´ll alienate exactly those who don´t have the time to be millionaires.

[Torg]

lowering the penalties of death (like SI) is an idea based on the concept of NC being a PvP game. which it isnt. its an MMORPG, a game where groups of people roleplay online. a place, where killing each other is just one form of social interaction, among others. you may want to bring your char to neofrag more often, because thats what you were asking for. werent you?
the outpost battle system, on the other hand, may need some changes.

[William Antrim]

lowering the penalties of death (like SI) is an idea based on the concept of NC being a PvP game. which it isnt. its an MMORPG, a game where groups of people roleplay online. a place, where killing each other is just one form of social interaction, among others. you may want to bring your char to neofrag more often, because thats what you were asking for. werent you?
the outpost battle system, on the other hand, may need some changes.

Which part is constructive please? Really now I have read it twice and I do not see any facts just a load of words but thanks for the input anyway. I am not gonna comment further because you have added nothing to the discussion but cheers anyway.

Manuel before making such bold statements please look at the game in its current state. I am aware that vehicles are in game. I remember the time when vehicle speed was tied to FPS... (yes exactly).

Now look at the state of the "Op fights" in the game currently. Look at how easy (or not so) it is to get a group of fighters into a place to have a fight. Look how long those fights last.

Now compare those fights with the fights in other games - instancing, battlegrounds, queue systems and the like. Every game where combat is a key element of the game makes the combat happen in easy to use, simple methods. Players are plucked from their respective realm/server/shard/etc and placed into combat with their peers. This is the fun part for them. The running endlessly across the wastes to get lost, go the wrong way or heaven forbid DIE along the way is not fun. Then you have the waiting around for the other team to do the same. It can be easily over 30 minutes or more just waiting for a 5 minute op fight. In many other games I can have 2 or 3 or even more fights in that time so why would I waste my time logging into nc for a fight? I am an average gamer at best. I do not have the time to waste waiting on some clan to turn up. If that happens I am off to play a game where I can be in the game and fighting people in ten minutes, not 2 hours. This is common sense.

People want fun in NC. Unless youre in one of the "big" (I use the term loosely) clans that owns all of the ops then you have to walk everywhere. Why should one clan have the right to own the entire map? Because they have more hackers or because the other clans just simply cant be arsed to go through all that heart ache to get the grs opened up.

What is more fun - like my original post asked? Ops that get taken hourly or Ops that get taken monthly?

[William Antrim]

Enti explain please in elaborate detail how this system can be abused? Do you think spending money is an abuse of the financial system? I can list economists from here to eternity who would respectfully disagree.

[hatmankh]

I could be wrong but judging from his past posts he probably means the money is worthless and easy to get with exploits.

[Torg]

Which part is constructive please?
you dont seem to get it. sigh. ok, again.
your point is: "me and my friends are having the most fun in NC while doing PvP, so please make PvP easier and we all will have more fun".
my point is: "NC is an MMO and PvP is just a part of it. one among many. taking away death disadvantages would reduce immersion, i.e.. so i dont support your idea here. go play counterstrike, or planetside, or whatever online-shooter."
so you put up a point, and i brought up an argument against it. better?
apart from that we totally agree on the need to both reduce zone-laming and improve op-battles.

[William Antrim]

No. Still dont get it. the pedantic sigh just makes me think "tool" not "torg". You completely missed my point so youre either blind or... My point is in the original post. Go read the first post then discuss MY point, not your interpretation of my point. Taking away the disadvantages would bring the advantages I talked about. It would not reduce "immersion" it would breathe life into the game.

Your last line is just like saying I agree the world is round. What exactly does that bring to the discussion? My entire point is that your post does nothing for the spirit of good discussion and only serves to pad your post count. You bring no constructive counterpoint, you just spout off the same bs you always do about a point that you have no real concept of.

You agree we need to improve op fights yet you disagree with a way to improve them and then offer no further comment on an alternative way to improve them?

Just how do you expect to help improve the game if you cannot come up with a constructive suggestion?

coming back with the age old "go play Counterstrike" is just the sort of narrow-minded bs that IS keeping the population away from nc. People are playing more modern games with these "easier" systems and they are enjoying them. Hence why some of those things need to be brought into nc, sharpish.


I could be wrong but judging from his past posts he probably means the money is worthless and easy to get with exploits.

money is worthless because there is nothing to spend it on. Having a money sink like the one suggested basically makes money worth something again.

It would be good to be "rich" for a while. I can guarantee you however that once these changes got made (if that was ever to be the case) the amount of money drained out of this game would dramatically increase in a 24 hour period.

[Torg]

william: i apologize for giving you a bad time by not sharing your opinion. the one you expressed in your threadstart. but i'm still not sharing it. please try not to be upset. it's just i don't want NC getting more carebearish, low penalty-deaths and all, but finding its way back to its original strengths.

[William Antrim]

More carebear-ish? By encouraging and increasing the level of PVP and attracting more players to pvp? Yeah ok if thats Carebear then you can call me rainbows and buttercups.

When the servers empty out then you can stick around and remind yourself how hardcore you are. :)

[Doc Holliday]

Great opening post. the winds of change are blowing. Don't let them pass you by. Anyone arguing against this really needs to consider why they argue when the obvious intention is more pvp to breathe life in to the game. Argue the toss all you want but the game needs life so don't be so stubborn trying to hold back change.

[El Sid]

Don't know if it's possible to add tiered GR respawning to the game but if it is possible and people have reservations based on immersion or roleplay try to look at it this way; the GR system is run as a business in game. Why wouldn't a business want to offer tiered services to it's customers? If a customer is prepared to pay a premium for better service you would be an absolute idiot not to offer it. They could offer multiple choices, as an example gold, silver and bronze respawning. So bronze would be the standard that we are used to and be cheap as chips, silver could maybe cut the time in half and be proportionally more expensive, while gold would offer none of the draw backs at a vastly increased price.

I'll confess that I'm a total care bear and not exactly rich thanks to time limits so I'd be sticking with the standard service. PvP players are the likely big benefactors and users of an option like this, and that doesnt affect me in the slightlest. I still would have the same options to use or not use the service and carry on playing as normal.

Would this extend to normal GR travel or just respawning from death? I don't see the SI penalty from GR travel as much as a time sink as that from death so I don't see as much a need there, but it's always an option.

I suppose my one caveat would have to be the pricing. Respawning from death with 0 SI would have to incur a hefty price. If you offer a premium service to short cut the penalties of death you should expect a heavy price to do so.


Would like to chip in on the whole OP fight hacking ideas but it's be a long ass time since I've had any involvement in op fights and my recent NC playing has been exclusively care bearing.

For the current system requiring entering hacknet how complex is it and how long does it take?

The ninja hacking method of old, again how long did it take and what was involved? (I never bothered with hacking in the past, my combat characters were ususally the ME SHOOT GUNS variety)